


and if i can't have you, let me have this mirage

by monyaka



Series: Maybe Interactive 2020 December Prompts [3]
Category: Flower Lane: A Record of Romance (Visual Novel)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, F/F, Maybe Interactive 2020 December Prompts, Possibly Unrequited Love, Pre-Canon, Self-Hatred, Unrequited Crush
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-03
Updated: 2020-12-03
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:13:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27861341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/monyaka/pseuds/monyaka
Summary: if she falls hard enough, she might dissolve into the pool of taylor’s chocolate eyes, and isn’t that what she’s always wanted? to dissolve? to become nothing more than the perfect daughter, the perfect student, the perfect girlfriend? she knows she’s weird, she knows she’s overbearing, she knows she’s intense, but she doesn’t care. she wants to scatter herself to the wind, and maybe if she does, she might learn to like whatever’s left.—people say that when you love someone, you feel full of joy. but chelsea finds she just feels hollow.
Relationships: Chelsea Flint/Taylor Jones
Series: Maybe Interactive 2020 December Prompts [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2035726
Comments: 2
Kudos: 9





	and if i can't have you, let me have this mirage

**Author's Note:**

> i hate that the first flower lane story i've ever written is straight up angst, but honestly? i've been wanting to write a chelsea character study for a while now. i just think she's neat

she’s described with a lot of words, isn’t she? a madonna. sweet, cute, polite. frigid, snobbish, spoiled. but never intense, never weird, never pathetic. chelsea isn’t one for the arts, but even she knows she’s a master sculptor, able to carve out the pieces of herself that she hates, able to present herself as a piece coated in gloss and varnish for people to _ooh_ and _aah_ over. but one girl doesn’t.

 _taylor_ doesn’t. 

and maybe that’s where it started, that taylor simply didn’t flock to her like other girls did. that she’s never seemed to care about chelsea’s money or her status or her looks. and it would be a lie if chelsea said she isn’t hurt by that, but more than that, it intrigues her. taylor is down-to-earth and enchanting, and when she looks up at the campus celebrity with her warm brown eyes, chelsea can feel herself falling, and falling, and falling.

if she falls hard enough, she might dissolve into the pool of taylor’s chocolate eyes, and isn’t that what she’s always wanted? to dissolve? to become nothing more than the perfect daughter, the perfect student, the perfect girlfriend? she knows she’s weird, she knows she’s overbearing, she knows she’s intense, but she doesn’t care. she wants to scatter herself to the wind, and maybe if she does, she might learn to like whatever’s left.

and that’s why, when taylor kisses her hard on the lips, she’s left breathless. no, her chest is heaving; her breaths are hurtling down taylor’s throat. chelsea’s life force is in taylor’s lungs now. she’s losing herself to her. chelsea moves her lips. (they feel cold and dry, but she tells herself not to open her eyes.) she tries to take control, to arch her knee up and make taylor gasp. (it travels through the empty air; she can feel how the hem of her skirt slides down her too-cold leg.) she squeezes her eyes shut tighter, tries to imagine where taylor’s head is. and she reaches her hand out to run a hand through the beautiful waves that cascade down her shoulders in that messy ponytail of hers. (but her hand swipes nothing, oh, honey, don’t you know you’re chasing false dreams?)

she breathes, and it’s sharp in her chest, and her breath comes out sharp too. her hair is wet with the tears that have dropped off her cheeks. _i hate you._ she wants to say it, to speak it into existence, to hate taylor for not being here right now — but she doesn’t hate her. she hates _herself,_ for being what no one thinks she is. that’s right: pathetic. pathetic, and intense, and weird. 

and this pathetic, intense, and weird girl smothers her face in her pillow and screams. and she cries, wonders how it is that she can have the whole world fed to her on a silver spoon and still feel so miserable. she can imagine taylor’s face (how could she not, when she spends all her class time staring at her?) but her voice is starting to fade, and chelsea can’t remember how she looks when she smiles and it’s _killing_ her. it’s killing her, because she’s shovelling sand down her throat every day by believing in this mirage. chelsea wants love. she wants taylor to look at her. but all of that is just a pipe dream, a false oasis in what’s truly an endless desert.

there’s a knock on her door, and someone enters the room with footfalls too soft to be kaira’s. “don’t look at me,” chelsea says, voice muffled by the pillow. “my makeup is all messed up.” _and if you see me like this, you might see how pathetic i am._ but she doesn’t say it. she just carves out the parts of herself she doesn’t like and stands there, a bleeding, hollow masterpiece.

“oh, dear.” that’s what alicia says, and chelsea hears her set down a cup of tea on her desk, feels her sit on the side of her bed. it’s just a single bed, and chelsea’s legs twitch. oh, she remembers taylor just above her, with her eyes soft and warm, and it tears through the girl once more. that sadness, that agony. and then she feels an arm fitting itself under her shoulders, feels herself being lifted, pillow and all. and then she feels the warmth of alicia’s embrace. “you’re shaking.”

how can chelsea tell her that hollow objects are always cold?

and yet, selfishly — ha, let’s add _selfish_ to the list of things she hates about herself — she buries her face in alicia’s chest, buffered by the pillow, and wraps her frail, shaking arms around her. _taylor’s a mirage,_ she tells herself. _alicia is real. i shouldn’t want more than what i can have._ alicia rubs her back, up and down and up and down, and chelsea feels dangerously safe. and that’s why she ends up choking it out, why she ends up swiping through her madonna mirage and emerging as her ugly, pathetic self. “i’m so fucking _broken._ ”

“i’m sorry, i can’t hear you through the pillow.” alicia’s voice is soft and warm and caring, a promise of security and connection. but chelsea flinches at the sight of something real, shies away from the kindness of others. she puts up wall after wall, and hopes that no one will see the cracks at their foundations. so she says nothing.

when it comes down to it, after all, she’d rather chase mirages.


End file.
